The Lost Art of Glazing

The windows on the older part of The Homestead were handmade at least 100 years ago and set into 18-inch thick walls made of native stone, local brick, and home-made mortar. They are typical pioneer windows in a typical southern Utah pioneer home. And, when we bought the house, they were in awful shape—cracked glass, broken sashes, and peeling paint. From day one, the wind blew directly into the living room, mitigated only by some masking tape installed by some previous owner.

The first thing the old windows needed was a set of storms. The single (interior) pane of glass was exposed directly to the wind and the rain. A storm window on the outside would add some protection from the elements while providing a dead-air space for insulation. So, we measured the windows and made a trip to George’s Salvage in Salt Lake City. George’s is worth a story of its own, but suffice it to say that the place is stacked 50 feet deep in old windows and doors, not to mention toilets and coal stoves.

We left our measurements with the staff at George’s and they promised to do some research. In a few days they called back to say they had what we needed. I went to pick them up and found that the objects in question were in the back warehouse, upstairs, and down the hall. I also found that there were no lights in the warehouse and that the upstairs walkway was only as wide as one of my feet. It was great fun blindly wrestling those things down the stairs and out the door without breaking my neck. I had to feng shui them into the car, but I managed to haul six of them home and into the shed.

In contrast to modern windows which arrive from the factory in one piece, old window frames were constructed of wood by a carpenter while each piece of glass was individually cut and fitted to the frame. The glass was secured by glazier’s points and sealed by glazing compound. Glazing compound is a putty like substance that can be applied like caulk, but that eventually dries to form a hard “gasket” around the edge of the glass. After many years of exposure to sun and wind the dry glazing can become cracked and brittle, eventually falling out and leaving the glass propped against the frame without a weather proof seal. We found that all the windows we owned were in that condition, the ones on the house as well as the ones we had salvaged. So, it was time to make some repairs.

We started at a major home improvement retailer where we found that they no longer cut and sold glass. OK. How about glazier’s points and glazing compound? After a long period of fruitless searching, the salesperson said, “Nobody does that anymore, so we don’t sell that stuff.” Glazing windows, I’ll admit, is somewhat painstaking, but does that mean that it can no longer be done? We moved on to the local branch of a national hardware franchise. The salesperson gave us a blank stare but pointed us vaguely to the back of the store. It was there, on a dusty rack, that I found a box of glazier’s points. With those, a tub of glazing compound that I found on their painting aisle, and some glass cut by a custom glass shop, we were in business.

Now I’ve seen some poor glazing jobs in my life . . . and I’ve even done some. But, the trick to good glazing is to lay in an angled bead of compound and then smooth it with a knife until the whole thing looks uniform. A really good glazer can make the window look like it came from the factory with the glass and the frame molded together perfectly. On a hundred year old house, perfection is not necessary, but we don’t want it to look bad from the road. And, so, slowly, window by window we have practiced the art of glazing . . . massaging the putty into the cracks, smoothing it, adding some here and there, and re-smoothing it. With each repair the wind whistles through the living room a little less and the place looks like less of a derelict.

Is window glazing truly a lost art, and does it really matter? I mean, it is simply a tedious home maintenance job and nobody, apparently, does that anymore. Besides, factory built windows are easier to use and much more energy efficient than old style single pane windows. I suppose that the loss I feel is simply nostalgia. As I glazed a storm window in the early winter sun yesterday, working to make the house warmer as winter begins to bite, Ellen played beside me in the yard. Just for a few minutes the world was settled, my daughter’s voice was soothing, and I was working a good line of glazing into a salvaged storm. It was art.

A Walk in the Mountains

I went for a walk in the mountains today. The National Weather Service had issued a blizzard warning and the road to the trailhead was already snowed in. I put the truck in four-wheel drive and pushed ahead. At the Noah’s Ark trailhead, I strapped on some snowshoes, grabbed some ski poles, and started up the trail. More than a foot of new snow was on the ground and the stuff was falling steadily. The woods were silent and dusky, and as I walked, I thought about a couple of things, scary things and practical things.

After hiking along through the snow for a few hundred yards, I came across the tracks of a lion. Actually, the lion had been using the trail and I followed its tracks. It was nice to have the trail broken for me in the deep snow, but after a while I began to feel a little spooky about it. I stopped to blow out one of the tracks. There was quite a bit of new snow in it. It must have been made several hours ago. Right? Besides, cats sleep during the day . . . don’t they? Lion attacks are rare, and it is silly to scare yourself by looking warily around in the quiet forest, but I did that for a while until the lion tracks dropped off the trail and fell away below me. (Of course, it was the Noah’s Ark trail, I guess I should have expected a second lion.)

As I worked my way higher on the mountain and the wind began to blow and the snow got deeper, I started to think about avalanches. It wasn’t really avalanche terrain, but there were a few gullies to cross and visibility was low. Now, I don’t want to scare anyone away from the mountains in the winter, especially myself, but avalanches are not rare, and people are killed by them every year in Utah. I kicked at a couple of steep pillows of snow. They weren’t going anywhere—too light and unconsolidated. There was no sense worrying about avalanches today, but it was a good reminder about winter travel in the mountains.

Besides scaring myself, I debated the merits of the snowshoes versus the skis I had left at home. Overall, I prefer skis in the mountains. For one thing, skis are better at supporting you on top of the snow than are the silly snowshoes sold today, which are hardly bigger than a pair of Sorrels. In addition, skis require only about half the steps of snowshoes (the uphill half) and can provide long gliding descents—instead of an uphill slog followed by a downhill slog. On the other hand, skis can be a bit of a trick to maneuver around steep switchbacks. And, sometimes, the gliding benefits of skis can make the descent a little too fast for comfort—especially in thick trees. Today, I was on a pretty rough trail with a number of switchbacks through the dense scrub oak, so I concluded that snowshoes were the right choice for the job.

I got pretty high up on Noah’s Ark today. I hiked along some exposed ridges, the wind blew, and I experienced that fierce joy of being alone in the mountains in the winter. But, besides my camera, I wasn’t carrying anything—no food, no water, no shelter, no dry socks, nothing. When I travel like that, I try to rein in the urge to go just a little further; I start to think about how far I am from the truck and what it is going to take to get back to it. So, I turned around before the top. I went down, I drove home, and I dried my wet socks on the woodstove.

White Out/Black Out

The wind blew hard during the night and, before daylight, the snow started coming in sideways. It was one of those blizzards where you can't see across the street. I was up, in the dusky dawn, starting the fire and the coffee. I had a couple of lights on, but they soon flickered and went dark. It was the start of a three hour black out. The good thing, however, about living like 19th century homesteaders is that our routine pre-electric lifestyle is not really impacted by, well, a lack of electricity. I put on a headlamp (Aha, battery powered devices were not available in the 19th century.), gathered a few candles, and moved the coffee pot to the top of the woodstove. Done. Let it snow. We cooked breakfast on the woodstove (OK, the final touches were done on a propane camp stove.), ate by candle-light, and sat in the living room looking at old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Maybe we'll send away in the mail for one of those new hand-crank washing machines.

Christmas Tree

It isn't all hard drudgery at The Homestead, sometimes we take a day off to enjoy the mountains. Yesterday we went Christmas tree hunting in the snow and fetched home a nine foot fir. I cut about a foot off the bottom to make it easier to wrestle through the door. The girls did the decorating and it looks really good. Last year at this time we were trying to move in to the house and I had to grab a tree on my own—not exactly in keeping with the family tradition. I found an ugly pinyon along the road near Escalante and threw it on top of one of my loads. We brought it with us to Grandma and Grandpa's house and the girls did a nice job with it, but this year's version is way better. With all due respect to the lowly pinyon, I think I'm sold on the true fir at Christmas time. Now, I'm going to call this one a subalpine fir (Abies bifolia), but someone could convince me that it should properly be called a western subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa). The taxonomy of the three (or four) subspecies/varieties has me a bit confused. (It is tough to see the leaves in this picture, but there is a specimen just to the right of Ellen.)

Skiing the Homestead

The Homestead received only about three to five inches of snow out of our latest storm. But, the girls felt like that was a sufficient base for setting track. There was a good straight-away along the north side of the property, a turn around the garden, and a small down-hill run in the orchard. Soldier Hollow? Who needs it? Of course, the southern Utah sun may have something to say about the long-term success of our Nordic resort.